Vespians
The Vespians are a near-human species native to the world of Xyon in the Vespera Galaxy. The Vespians are the children of the human, Mikael the Traveler, who was the first and only extragalactic explorer of humanity, pioneering faster-than-light travel for his civilization. Today, the Vespians span the entirety of their home galaxy, and have since perfected the FTL drive that brought their forefather to their new home. The Vespians are the only sentient species in the galaxy, and to date, have yet to find another species as advanced or as complex as their own. Biology and appearance Reproduction History Origin The Vespians were the brainchild of human explorer, Mikael the Traveler, who was the first human being to travel another galaxy. Mikael hailed from the human homeworld of Terra, originally part of a program to seed the Vespera Galaxy with human life. According to Mikael's own historical recordings, his original goal was a failure, part of a long list of issues he recorded when he arrived in the galaxy. According to his writings, Terra was in the midsts of a major interstellar conflict that was raging from one end of the Milky Way Galaxy to the other. From what Mikael wrote, humanity was losing and a major illness was effecting all sides, the result of a failed bio-weapon test that was originally suppose to win the conflict. As the foremost authority on the then groundbreaking intergalactic travel program, Mikael was tasked with finding a way of getting the few remaining human survivors to another galaxy to start fresh. From what modern historians have gathered, that goal did not go according to plan, and Mikael came to the Vespera Galaxy alone. Appearently, Mikael was unable to save any of his fellow humans as the virus had claimed his homeworld, along with most of those who were supposed to have come with him to the new galaxy. Mikael himself had been away with his ship in a safe location after the enemy forces attacked the location the vessel was located, forcing Mikael to flee alone. Gathering what little supplies and technologies he could gather, Mikael left his home galaxy, and came to the Vespera Galaxy as the sole surviving member of his race, and appearently his entire galaxy. From what is understood from the records, the soldiers who fought against humanity returned to their people carrying dormant virus with them, wiping out entire civilizations in the process. Alone in the new galaxy, Mikael was determined to rebuild his society anew, though determined to prevent many of the issues that led to the conflict. Additionally, he understood he was going to die one day, and that he had to get to work quickly, hoping to live his mark before he died. Path to creation Mikael had brought with him many tools that would aid in the rebirth of humanity, though Mikael had forgotten, some say purposefully, to acquire the embryos needed to restart human civilization. Determined to correct many of the issues he associated with humanity, Mikael designed the Vespians to be stronger, smarter, and generally better looking than humans, along with a host of personal modifications. As Mikael stated on many occasions in his journals, humanity was bested time and again by their inferior physical abilities and their lack of cohesion based on petty rivalries, religions, and ethnicities. This was not to be the case with the Vespians. Mikael based many of the Vespians' traits off of his own, believing that with a common identity, the Vespians would remain unified as a race, something that even in their darkest hour, humanity had failed to do itself. Utilizing the technologies he had brought with him from Terra to assist within repopulation, Mikael began experimenting with new ideas to incorporate into his planned offspring. With plenty of time, resources, and motive to succeed, Mikael set about his task of building a better human from scratch, using himself as a template. The middle-aged human man was not the same as those who preceded him centuries before. Physically and mentally fit, intellectually adaptable, and long-lived by the standards of humans from centuries past, Mikael was the prime specimen needed to rebuild his society, albeit with some minor changes he sought to include. Though he had plenty of time to work on his project, Mikael had yet to find a homeworld to settle upon himself, something that was an absolute priority if his children were to develop properly. Dividing his time between working on his offspring and finding a new homeworld for both himself and his children, Mikael was a busy man with an important task. Determined to leave his mark on the new galaxy he would be as a first and only human to visit, Mikael had no plans of dying in space, and felt that if he was to die prematurely, then it would be on the planet of his choice, and not the spaceship he had fled upon. For years, Mikael sought out the world he thought would best reflect the desires and qualities he wanted in his children. Not a fan of green, "upbeat" leafy worlds, Mikael totally eschewed them, and not suicidal, he also avoided barren desert worlds and volanic planets falling apart at the seams. It was in the eighth year of his search that he discovered a cloudy torrent world that was both fertile and serious, with a balance of darkness and light. This world was grey and foggy, but full of life and promise. Covered by clouds all of the time, and raining for more than two-thirds of the year, the world was a perfect reflection of Mikael's emotional makeup at the time, and the world he found to be the most comfortable in his opinion. Mikael quickly named the planet Vespia, taking the name from the Latin vespera, meaning "evening". Mikael named the galaxy as a whole Vespera, having viewed his arrival in it as coming at a dark time that was at no point a joyous occassion. Reflecting greatly the dark, grey atmosphere that dominated the landscape, Vespia was to serve as the homeworld for Mikael's soon to be born Vespians. Once settled on Vespia, Mikael got to work on the Vespians at once. Issue of reproduction Almost immediately when making the Vespians, Mikael ran into a rather important issue with regards to reproduction. As the most important part of their survival, Mikael understood the importance of how he handled reproduction, and the danger of genetic bottle-necking, which would harm his descendants if not cared from properly. As the issue went, Mikael, being the template for the Vespians, was the only person from whom the genetic pool for all future generations of Vespians would draw from. However, the Vespians would soon fall victim to what Mikael branded "Eden Syndrome", in which inbreeding would ultimately take place as the tiny population of Vespians would start breeding with close relatives either knowingly or unknowingly at any point in the future, as there was only enough genetic material Mikael could pull from himself to create the first generation of Vespians. The effects of Eden Syndrome would ultimately destroy the Vespian population within what Mikael determined to be five or six generations tops. Therefore, to counter this problem, Mikael would have to develop a new way for the Vespians to reproduce without breeding themselves into infertility and eventual extinction. Mikael's original plan was to go with an ant-like reproductive system, in which a single female would produce all of the children upon fertilization. However, from this arose another problem–who would fertilize her and then any future mothers down the line? As it turned out, it would have to either be Mikael himself, or another male, who would undoubtedly be the mother's brother, and subsequently any daughters would have to be fertilized by their sons or brothers, once again leading to Eden Syndrome. Mikael sought to circumvent this issue by having the female Vespian self-fertilize, but that would prove to be too difficult and ultimately impossible, as the female could not produce sperm, and any children she had would, as a result of her only carrying XX-chromosomes, would all be female and therefore infertile, as they could not self-fertilize without the aid of a male who would once again be their brother leading to Eden Syndrome. Thus, Mikael formulated a solution to the problem, though perhaps the most unorthodox one he could imagine. Rather than have the females produce the offspring, the males would produce the offspring. Though Mikael found this idea to be unsavory personally, he understood that if he wished to leave his mark in the galaxy he was to die in, he needed to go with the plan. To that end, Mikael drew out how the entire method was to operate. The plan would work given that though he could not, with his resources that is, prevent Eden Syndrome, he could cut out the primary factor of it, inbreeding. By having the male Vespians produce the offspring, three major benefits could be derived from it. The first and most important was that the males could self-fertilize if given the proper abilities to do so. Looking back to stem cell research performed in the past, Mikael was able to draw upon the fact that sperm cells were the most malleable to transformation into stem cells, stem cells which could be turned into fertile egg cells. The reason Mikael couldn't do this with egg cells had more to do with the natural limitations of egg cells as they were. The egg cells were a finite resource subject to deterioration overtime, with increased risk for deformities or disabilities the later in life they are fertilized. Additionally, the egg cells were simply too complex and too precious to risk turning into stem cells to begin with to produce a handful of sperm cells. In the end, too many egg cells would be lost just to fertilize one of them. On the flip side, sperm were a dime a dozen, easily produced and easily wasted in the scale of billions. They could be transformed into stem cells with little issue or danger, and the dangers associated with self-fertilization were minimized enough that future generations of Vespians could correct the danger of Eden Syndrome once the technology existed for it. Mikael could easily develop a reproductive system geared to aid male Vespians in creating, storing and fertilizing the eggs, The second benefit was that men had both an X and Y-chromosome, meaning that they could produce both genders of Vespians without completely removing one of them. Though the gender ratio would be heavily imbalanced in favor of females to fill the roles of worker, warrior, and gatherer, it would help in protecting those who expanded the population individually, while removing from harm and protecting those young boys who would soon become patriarchs themselves. The final benefit was that the population could expand exponentially, as a single male could have several million offspring by himself in a single month alone. With a single man producing a whole city's worth of people on a monthly basis, the Vespian population would be secured so long as there was a single male Vespian in the population. In doing this, Mikael's lineage would be secured in the foreign galaxy. With the problems facing him in the reproductive sphere, Mikael set about putting his plans into action. Completion of the Vespians From his entering into the Vespera Galaxy to his completing the Vespian genome and by extension, the Vespian race itself, Mikael had spent more than thirty years perfecting his work so as to ensure that his children would not succumb to the violent end his species had just three decades before. The first Vespian created by Mikael was Lucius, bringing about the birth of the species Mikael had for so long labored to create. Humanity in his time had associated the name with an ancient figure of power, the meaning of Lucius's name was that of "light", which Mikael felt a suitable name for the boy who was to bring about the birth of an entire species on Vespia. Mikael spent the remaining years of his life teaching Lucius everything he knew, and gave him what could be referred to as a blueprint on how he wanted the Vespians to develop. This blueprint came in the form of a high-tech storage device that contained technologies Lucius was to introduce into the Vespian population at set intervals so as to ensure the swift and controlled development of Vespian civilization. This would ultimately aid in the formation of a type of society which was not so removed from that of humanity's, but did not contain so many of the same cultural viewpoints. Finally, Mikael urged Lucius to maintain the languages Mikael loved so dearly, namely, English, French, and Russian. Lucius would keep his promise to do so, and with that, he began his own work of building Vespian society. Mikael died fifty-seven years after his arrival in the Vespera Galaxy, only ever to see the creation of his first and only son, Lucius, through who all other Vespians were to be born. Mikael's death was to serve as the center point of the Vespian calendar created by Lucius after the death, with 1 NE, or "New Era", denoting the year Mikael died. Mikael made it clear he did not want Lucius to have any children until after his death, so as to ensure that only Lucius would be the man to whom all future Vespians would look to as their leader and ancestor. In spite of his wishes, Lucius, following Mikael's death, made sure that he was buried in a grand mausoleum that was built one hundred years after his death. Mikael's body was placed inside of a cryo-tube aboard the ship he came to Vespia on, preserving his body until a devoted system within his mausoleum could be built in the future. The tomb would remain closed off to the public for centuries, until the technology within the mausoleum could be matched by that in general Vespian society. Ancient history Under Lucius, the Vespians began their development in an orderly manner, maintained just as Mikael had wished it to be. With the exception of the grandiose mausoleum built for Mikael, all else on Vespia remained primitive in comparison, with Vespians wondering what the tomb was for, but never venturing inside thanks to Lucius's warnings not too. Vespian cultural development progressed smoothly, with Lucius introducing cultural innovations that would become the norm of Vespian society in the modern day. The first and most important of these was the introduction of the household concept. Each household was to be made up of a father, his sons, and the daughters that the father and sons had altogether. A law dictating that no grandson within a household could have offspring of their own was created by Lucius in 43 NE, became a religiously enforced law, as it helped to control overpopulation in the eyes of the Vespians, as well as prevent conflict within a household over food and resources. Understanding that this law would restrict population growth in certain built-up areas of Vespia, Lucius created seven households from his own House Lucius, of which all Vespians were members. This decision would effectively divide the Vespian population into seven groups to be sent to seven parts of the globe. The households Lucius created were each to be governed by one of the seven sons Lucius had restrained himself too having. These households in order of creation were: House Nazarov, House O'Neill, House Veilleux, House Madora, House Morgan, House Archambeau, and House Kane. Each of the names came from a list Mikael had given Lucius prior to his death, each of the surnames having been important to him before his flight from his home galaxy. Lucius disestablished his own household in 48 NE, removing himself from the public eye not long after that, hoping that he would be better able to guide his children more successfully if he was not directly involved in the day-to-day affairs of running the government of Vespia. In allowing the houses to govern themselves, Lucius had ended the short-lived unity of the Vespians, though this would help to add energy to the development of Vespian culture and society without the artifical introduction of new ideas and concepts. However, true to his word decades prior, Lucius would make sure that Mikael's plans were carried out after his death, and that the Vespians would develop according to the blueprint given to Lucius. Until then, Lucius was content to watch the growth of his offspring across the globe. The Nazarovs settled the vast, fertile plain regions of Vespia, while the O'Neills took to the central regions surrounded by the mountains of Vespia's planet-spanning continent. The Veilleux took to the far northwestern coastal regions, while the Morgans settled the northern, mineral-rich mountainous tundras close to Vespia's north pole. The Madoras claimed the underbelly of Vespia's continent to the east of the Nazarov lands, while the Archambeaus chose to settle the rocky and flood-prone lands just to the northeast of the Madoras. And finally, the Kanes settled the giant island to the direct east of the Archambeaus' holdings, away from the continent. The locations each of the seven households selected to serve as their homelands would serve to shape the culture of each, dictating how they would develop as a group within the same species. For the centuries to come, the events that took place on Vespia would set off that process of shaping the seven great houses into the nations they became as the Vespians know them in the modern day. Medieval history Industrialization Mastery of FTL travel Society and culture Religion Family and marriage Sexuality Category:Vespians Category:Sentient species Category:Copyight